Whoa. It's been a wild few months getting everything finalized and shipped to our first customers. When the Edible East Bay article was published in March, we were still a long way off from finalizing and shipping, even though we didn't know the real timeline at publication date! But as orders came in and customers remained patient, we worked hard to make the carts practical, awesome, and beautiful. The final carts headed out the door last week and are in the hands of our intrepid (and patient) customers. And now the first carts are cruising the farmers markets and customers are sharing excellent feedback. Thanks for the photos and kind words! After so many months and, honestly, questions and frustrations, it's such a great feeling to see them being...
This past month has been the longest of the cart making journey that began over eight months ago. By that I mean it's been the slowest in terms of creating, selling, or making a difference to our customers. To use a phrase that's never been more applicable to me, this is where the 'rubber meets the road', and unfortunately our rubber wheels are still in boxes. I prefer to write about Harvest Made and the cart with a positive tone, and ultimately I know the outcome will be very positive indeed. What's got me feeling blue is this important milestone, the first of many in our adventures, has slipped a few times and left our customers waiting. Everything we needed - parts, machines, capacity,...
How exciting! The Spring issue of Edible East Bay has a featured story on our Market Cart. We're so excited to be included in this because we love Edible Magazine - even our first cart we used an Edible East Bay issue as the prop. Good foresight! We first started reading Edible about 4 years ago after picking up a free copy at the Mountain View Farmers Market. It was a great publication and, small world, I knew one of the contributing writers, the now famous author of Ultimate Instant Pot Cookbook, Coco Morante. Fast forward a few years and when it came time to request cart feedback from market pros, Edible East Bay was one of the first groups I reached out...
We've gone through dozens of iterations of the cart in just the past 3 months. This includes everything from the wheel type, to the wood finish, the placement of the cupholders, and perhaps most importantly, the size and style of the oval perforations which greatly impact the weight. I want to talk about this because it's such an important part of getting to a great version of the product. Not a final version, because there's probably no such thing. Just a really great version. Last November I had a very rudimentary prototype born in the garage. For several months a design and manufacturing team and I worked through CAD files and getting a first version together. In January, that version...
A significant part of our business ethos is to make goods locally. Before we created the first real prototype, we knew the entire process was going to include sourcing materials locally, to be manufactured locally, and sold directly to customers or through independent retailers. Even if we didn't achieve it the first time, we would work to make that a reality. As we are learning, this is easier said than done. The entire manufacturing process for consumer goods has shifted overseas. The skills, resources, and people are all in a few countries that manufacture nearly everything we buy and use. For some products, that's okay. But not every item should default to overseas manufacturing. Why we believe this is a...